Conqueror

'I'm glad the Danish king's Christianity has stuck.'

Alfred smiled. 'Isn't cynicism a sin, priest?'

'I'll have to ask my bishop.'

Saberht blurted, 'Lord. Everybody asks why you deal with the Danes at all. You had the Danes on the run at Ethandune. Why give them half the country? Why not just push them back into the sea?'

Cynewulf made to apologise, but Alfred held up his hand. 'You are fiery for one of the cloth, aren't you, boy? Your tonsure is a little ragged too, you ought to take more care over that. The truth is, and hard though it is even for my thegns to accept it, we did not defeat the Danes at Ethandune. We defeated the remnant of one army. If I had pursued the Danes to Eoforwic I would have won myself some glory, but at the risk of losing everything when the next assault came. Instead I have spent my energies in making England impregnable.'

'Not England,' Saberht said, despite Cynewulf's glares. 'Half of England, dominated by Wessex. And what about the rest?'

'I have sons,' said Alfred. 'I need to leave them something to do. And in the meantime I have my books to write.'

Alfred, whose life had been dominated by the war with the Danes, had always had larger goals. He was designing a written code of law, assembled from the wisdom of the old English kingdoms – a programme inspired by the example of the east Roman emperor Justinian. And to make his country literate again he was having books translated, from the Latin to the English. He had begun with his favourite Boethius, and with histories, including Bede's famous work.

'I intend to leave an England rebuilt on surer foundations,' he said. 'An England united under God and a just law. An England where the King's writ extends into every shire, every hundred, every man's home. An England which maintains a fyrd, properly organised and equipped, ready to be called at any time to deter any aggressor. An England where a free man may read the word of God in his own tongue… One must take a long view.'

'And none,' Cynewulf said, 'takes a longer view than you, lord.'

Alfred warned, 'Like all kings I am a fool, but not one who responds to flattery.'

'It was meant sincerely.'

'But what of you, Cynewulf? Still a priest, at your time of life? Didn't I offer you a bishopric?'

'You did, and I was honoured. But it wasn't for me. After Ethandune I had had enough of history. I concluded I could best serve God's will by remaining a humble priest.'

'And by binding souls to Christ.' Alfred nodded. 'You see, we are alike, you and I. Always thinking of the longer term. What of your companion, the girl who knew the Menologium?'

'Aebbe? She has long gone. After her treatment by the Danes she couldn't bear children, the doctors told her. Well, she wasn't one for the convent. And so she left. I haven't heard from her since.'

'Many savageries were committed in those days,' Alfred said. 'One must fix what one can fix, and put aside the rest.' He glanced at his clerks, who were waiting patiently with more documents.

Cynewulf knew it was time to leave. He stood, pulling Saberht up with him. 'Lord, may I ask one more thing? The prophecy. Did it truly guide your decisions, in those days?'

Alfred stroked that long chin, now grizzled with grey stubble. 'I don't know, priest. That's the truth. The prophecy was and is a strand in my thinking – but so is Bede, so are the lives of the Caesars, and so above all is the Word of God.' He smiled. 'But if the task of our generation was to save a corner of England we've succeeded, haven't we? We must leave oceanic empires to another age.'

'Do you still have the Menologium?'

'My clerks made copies. The remaining stanzas speak of the far future, you know – many of your Great Years, hundreds of months. It will take centuries for the rest of it to unfold, though nobody in my court can add up numbers well enough to tell me exactly how long. And so it is the task of the future to deal with it – and, therefore, of my own dynasty. Which, let me remind you, springs from Cerdic himself, if not from Woden, and ought therefore to persist as long as there is an England.' He winked at the priest. 'I could scarcely believe otherwise, could I?' He glanced at his clerks. 'Now, where were we?…'

Cynewulf never saw the King again. Nor did he see Aebbe. But he did learn of her fate – in, astonishingly, a letter from the runaway slave and murderer, Ibn Zuhr.

XXI

Five years had passed since Cynewulf's last meeting with Alfred when the letter found him.

'I was impelled to write to you, Fr Cynewulf, for I knew you to be a good man, and always respected your intellect – though I believe that intellect to be wasted on your immature theology. I have no doubt you think ill of me, but perhaps you can understand how it was for a man like me to be condemned to a life of slavery under a man like Arngrim.

'In any case I do not write for your forgiveness, but to satisfy my own longing to tell you my news.'

And that news, Ibn Zuhr said, concerned the fate of Aebbe – and the meaning of the Menologium of Isolde.

Ibn Zuhr, perhaps understandably, said little of himself. After the death of Arngrim he had escaped out of Wessex into Mercia and then, following the roads he had once travelled with Cynewulf and his master, he had made for Eoforwic-Jorvik. Cynewulf understood; this man of the cities of al-Andalus had sought the nearest to a city that Britain had to offer.

Among the Danes and English of Jorvik the Moor stood out, of course, but there were many traders from the southern lands in Jorvik. And in the bustling, open economy of the Danish town he had soon managed to scrape a living from his medicinal knowledge. 'Perhaps my exotic appearance helps reassure my patients of my healing powers,' he noted dryly.

He had always intended to earn enough money to get himself out of the country and back home to al-Andalus, and perhaps some day he would. 'But I was such a young man when I was stolen from my home, and so much must have changed about it – and about me – that perhaps only disappointment would follow were I to travel back.' And besides, as Jorvik grew and prospered, Ibn Zuhr found he rather liked his new life. He found the fusion of cultures fascinating. 'Danish women spin all winter to make sails of English wool…'

But he had never forgotten Arngrim, 'the only man I ever killed' or so he claimed. And through contacts with patients and traders he followed the fates of the leaders of the Force that had once assaulted Cippanhamm.

He learned that Egil, the Beast of Cippanhamm, nemesis of Arngrim, 'and co-murderer with me of my master', had come to Jorvik to end his days in the hall of his brother, a ship-owner called Ulfjlot, 'just as brutal as his brother, though in possession of both his arms, and indeed all his teeth and an intact nose'.

Not long after Egil's return, Ulfjlot died of 'heathen excess', wrote the Moor. And Egil and his family mounted a lavish funeral rite to ease the passage of Ulfjlot into the pagan otherworld. Ibn Zuhr described what occurred at this rite, as relayed to him by an eye-witness, he said, but in such detail that Cynewulf wondered if he himself had not attended the rite.

As is the custom of these people, the slaves of the dead man were asked which of them would die with his master. A young English woman who called herself Aelfflaed put herself forward. The other slaves, of course, made themselves scarce. This Aelfflaed, ageing, scarred but comely enough – for that would be important in what followed – would do.

So she was taken, and put in charge of two young women of the household, who waited on her for ten days. She ate, drank and indulged in any pleasure they could provide.

Meanwhile Ulfjlot's finest ship was dragged on to the river bank and placed on a wooden scaffold, under which firewood was heaped. Amidships a tent of sail-cloth was set up over a couch. Ulfjlot's brothers and their men set up tents for themselves close around the ship; there were seven of them, including Egil.